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[Column] General: Why We Need a Little Chaos
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
With the World Cup going on, I’ve been thinking about events, big and small. Events can bring people together around any game, and it’s no different when it comes to MMORPGs. Though in some of the more modern MMORPGs, sometimes it feels like things are a bit on autopilot. Everything is programmed in and left hands-off, and it makes me nostalgic for the days of active GM participants and the sometimes chaotic world of active live events in games. Nothing quite replaces the feeling of turning a corner while questing, only to come face to face to a lore character, or to stumble upon one off in a plaza somewhere before the inevitable crowd trickling in turns into a massive gathering. There’s just a sense of excitement that’s often missing.
Read more of Christina Gonzalez's The Social Hub: Why We Need a Little Chaos.
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Comments
Good article, and I agree.
Matrix Online, in particular, had awesome events led by GMs. They even did a lot of on-the-spot things for individual groups of players.
One such event involved my own guild (I forget what they were called in that game now... Crews?)..
A real-life couple was getting married in-game, and we'd arranged the ceremony at a church.
This event was scheduled during the storyline where an assassin was out to kill Morpheus because he was stirring up crap with the Machines trying to get Neo's body back, and people feared he'd start another war.
So, early in the ceremony when people were getting set up, someone said "The assassin's here! Up on the balcony!". We all set out trying to get the Assassin and chased him off across the rooftops. Of course, being faster than any of us, he got away, so we eventually gave up chase and went back to the church.
So, a bit more side explanation, so the rest will make sense...
In MxO, you could add GM-run characters to your friends list, so you could see when they jacked in. This one crew member had Morpheus on his list. When he saw him logged in, he sent a message explaining that crew-mates of his were getting married, and it would be awesome if Morpheus could show up and maybe say a few words.
So... as we're getting settled back in for the wedding, the crew-mate gets a PM from Morpheus, saying something to the effect of "I understand you had some company". The crewmate explains that the Assassin showed up at the wedding, that we'd tried to chase him down but he got away. Morpheus says, "He must have intercepted your communication to me and was there in case I showed up." He (Morpheus) then asks the names of the two getting married and then contacts each of them personally to offer his congratulations.
That was a completely on-the-spot, unscripted and, of course, unexpected event that took place, specifically for our group of people, at that particular occasion. All started by a single contact with a GM-run character.
I know there were other similar events for other players/groups. It was an amazing thing and Monolith was really on to something awesome there. Sadly, I think their reach exceeded their grasp, and the game was too much to keep up with. They eventually sold MxO to SOE, who did some basic work on it, but mostly let it rot on the vine until they took it offline completely (something they're particularly good at, it seems).
Only other online game I've ever seen that level of GM interaction with was on a Neverwinter Nights PW.. and that wasn't even a MMO.
Hehe, he had to mention IMO, what was one of the worst MMOs ever made, Matrix Online. UO had event coordinators. Players who made a proposal for a in game event and if approved, usually had GM involvement.
As to chaos, the instance grinding in Wow did a lot of that. Guild politics became quite the issue, even though we knew many of the people in real life.
In the early days of UO they had a plot moving along and often GMs played characters (which were sometimes left as NPCs too, with a minor script).
This encounter between a player and a GM smack in the middle of some events that weren't even official events, just being acted out in case players happened on them. Juo'nar was the bad guy played by a GM. Players had a script that would allow you to save conversations, so this was accurate.
Juo'nar: YOU THERE! Listen well. I have what I came for.
Eric Of MiRC: yes
Juo'nar: The name Juo'nar will be known throughout the land.Tell your foolish masters that they're time has come!!!
Eric Of MiRC: I shall
Juo'nar: You're petty world of order means nothing to me now.!!
Eric Of MiRC: We will not stand for evil such as you
Juo'nar: I fear not your foolish words
Eric Of MiRC: I shall not attack you, I respect your strength,
Juo'nar: It would do you no good.
Eric Of MiRC: but I despise your ways.
Juo'nar: Despise me if thou wish, you will kneel before meas will all of Britannia!!! These monks were but the first to die!
Eric Of MiRC: Hmm.
Juo'nar: Your name will be numbered among the dead or the followers,there are no other choices!
Eric Of MiRC: I will be dead, never a follower.
Juo'nar: That is unfortunate. The world is preparing to move on. my order shall rule.
http://uo.stratics.com/secrets/tc/h_06.shtml
What was interesting too was the player's comments on the message boards. He said he wasn't a roleplayer, even disdained roleplayers to some extent. But he said he couldn't help himself, and actually got into the roleplay here.
Once upon a time....
You don't need GM's to have an event that brings everyone together.FFXI has Besieged and until i stopped playing brought MANY players to the event each and every day,yes even after 10 years of the same event recycling.
You just need to make GOOD content or events and they can last forever.What most games are doing is just making 1 time fly by night events that are soon forgotten,aside from the seasonal events of course but even those are often dismissed after doing them the first time.
Bottom line is yes events are awesome and do bring players together but we also need developers to put a lot more effort into these events.I remember playing ROM a game i sort of liked,well the events in that game were nothing short of absolute garbage,not worth even 1 second of my time.That is what happens when you contract a publisher,they only put in the bare minimum the contract calls for and of course their hands are tied when comes to big game changes.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
http://www.youtube.com/user/chopgr?feature=mhee
"The Heavens burned, the stars
cried out
And under the ashes of infinity,
Hope, scarred and bleeding,
breathed its last."
Enjoyed the article. While it's true events add fun, they suffer from the same weakness as typical themepark design. You have to churn out new events to keep things interesting, just like content.
What's really special about those events? Having celebrity lore characters or the fact that they are played by real people?
What do MMOs usually have a strong supply of? Real people. Yet most of them are pigeonholed into being on the seat of an amusement park ride instead of actually becoming part of the world and shaping it's lore.
It wasn't just that Lord British was killed, it was that another person killed him. Rainz is a memorable name because of that.
In early SWG there are still dedicated crafters I remember by name. On the Bloodfin server, Enott's weapons or Afinity's tailor shop.
That's the problem with today's MMOs, except for some struggling indies, they all tend to lack imagination and waste opportunities to make deeper games. Not enough thinking outside the box.
There's a multiplayer-MMO game I've been waiting for someone to make ever since UO and no one has come close yet. So what's the solution?
If anyone is tired of playing games because they're lacking. Why not make them? Look at how DayZ began. Want to boycott a company because of their practices? compete with them.
Goat Simulator has completely dominated EA!
These days you can get an engine like Unreal Engine 4 for $20 including source code. If you cancel the monthly payment, you get to KEEP the last version you had access to. With the blueprint visual scripting system you can do a hell of a lot more than you could without coding skills in the past and it might just help you learn to think like a programmer. You can prototype all kinds of gameplay with default/example art assets.
/2 cents
Blah
very well written and i only can agree with you, christina, but ... there is always a but ... gm driven events are a tool of the past for a community which doesn't exist anymore. before 2005 (the run of the masses into the mmorpgs) a community was shaped by admireres of the genre, people who didn't need a x on a minimap to find the a clue for a quest, people who didn't need groupfinders cause they were able to communicate, people who had enough brain and good behaviour to handle the appearance of a gm as a tool to spice up the game. what do you think will happen if a gm would show up and try to start a nice event? i bet the most reaction he will get will be like .... "hey dude, are you all f****** retards, fix that f****** <insert a random game mechanic>, ya noobs." but i do see a glimpse of a chance that gms as a tool could come back, but not in the big triple a games from the big static companies, more likely in one of the promising indie games that hopefully will see the light. these indie games are targeting a whole other consumer group.
One of the things that killed having in-game events was the number of servers games started to have. When you have 6-8 servers, it was far easier to do the events, although even at that it was a sizable task. I've done in-game events for Ultima Online, vMTV and EVE Online. In general, you tend to need a team 2-5 people for 1.5hrs-2hrs of time to organize and pull off a 1-hour event for a single server. UO, by nature of its regional server farms, the hurdle of what time to do the event was solved ahead of time, as east coast players were on Atl and Cats, west coast on Pacific and Sonoma, etc. Today's game servers aren't done that way, meaning you're often picking peak time on each server which means some group will almost always miss out on the fun on each server (ex:aussies).
When you reach the the number of servers that many MMOs today have, you reach a point where it becomes really expensive down the line of manpower to pull these things off. When doing the events in vMTV, we had the MTV PR and Marketing teams on the line with us start to finish, so had that been more than one server, it simply would not have been doable. EVE Online has had a somewhat regular cadence of events the past couple of years, often primarily to progress the storyline in-game. With a single-server architecture, that's far easier to pull off.
There are smaller events that we've done in the various games that usually require far less oversight, logging, and maintenance however the overarching concern is the appearance of favoritism. The time, the location, the type of event... someone somewhere is going to insist that a particular group is being catered to, worked against, or actively ignored. While this is no reason to not do events, it definitely does create extra work to deal with it.
If you want in-game events, it might be worth it to rally people on the forums of your favorite MMO to get on the community team about it. Since in-game events often require a significant amount of resources to pull off, simply "because retention" doesn't sell those who can green light it on the idea. If they see interest in it, it can help further it along. If you run a fansite for your favorite game, cover the in-game events and then make sure to email the community team with links to it. That helps them go back to their leads with something that say "We did x, and here is the return/reception," which in turn can help influence the decision to do further events.
Word.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think a game designed from the get-go with tools for the GMs to use can significantly reduce that time and effort of GMs.
Think of commands like in games like Ages of Empires (the single player version), both during combat and between as a GM actively directs his forces. Add in tools for immediate use while the GM is playing his evil character that are basically like UO had for pets and allow the GM to set up units to command as one.
Tools are the key, and then let the GM simply play his evil character, or sit back and direct his forces from an invisible mode.
Another thing that would help is two fold. AI. If a game has AI that includes "dungeon AI" or any area or zone, that can be tapped into by NPC AI to help in things like tactics, then that can be very useful in both cases of game MOBs on their own and also for GM forces.
Instead of just one-off events, you can have a moving history of almost any sort.
Give a GM a character and a strategy, and let him play it out against the players. The GM could be given Juo'nar, and an ability to "charm" in-game NPC orcs. Let him move about building his forces, giving commands for building a fort, do small events (gathering mats and etc.) and try to survive, and actively work to recruit players to his evil cause. Let the rest of the players discover him and his goals through game play, and do what they will about it.
Edit to add: And do this multiple times (one GM could have several such character/goals) with multiple GMs spread out around a huge single world.
Once upon a time....
Events help bring a game world alive and fleshes out the game in a way that most scripted events cannot.